<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Darkest Shade of Pink by thetransgirlwhoneverwas</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26813833">The Darkest Shade of Pink</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetransgirlwhoneverwas/pseuds/thetransgirlwhoneverwas'>thetransgirlwhoneverwas</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fictober 2020 [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Power Rangers, Power Rangers (Boom! Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:20:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,154</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26813833</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetransgirlwhoneverwas/pseuds/thetransgirlwhoneverwas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Coinless fight a never-ending battle against Lord Drakkon and his forces. Every day their ranks shrink as more and more fall in combat. Zack isn't sure how many more they can lose. But when he encounters an old friend in a terrifying new form, he realises just how much he's already lost.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fictober 2020 [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952200</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Darkest Shade of Pink</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Zack Taylor inspected the smoking remains of the scout bunker that he had heard explode just a few minutes ago. Hardly well-constructed at the best of times, given the limited resources of the Coinless, the small structure had caved in entirely. Zack grabbed a sheet of metal covering most of the bunker and, grunting with exertion, lifted with all his might. His muscles ached with the effort, but with a final pull the metal sheet came off the ground and he flipped it, the sheet falling and crashing down the hill far too loudly for Zack’s liking. Two more metal sheets covered the rest of the bunker, but both of these were smaller, all that remained of the roof that covered the hole dug into the hill, only big enough for one person to comfortably fit. After both sheets were gone, Zack recognised the two bodies still in the bunker. Richard and James. Both good men. Both good soldiers. More casualties. Zack had once promised to remember the names of every single one. That promise hadn’t lasted long. There were just too many.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he said to them, more for his own satisfaction. They couldn’t hear him. Their fight was over. This news was not going to go down well. Morale was down across the entire resistance ever since Matt died and they lost Kimberly to that assassination mission, regardless of how many still believed she was alive somewhere. Nobody had heard from her again, but Lord Drakkon wasn’t dead, so clearly it hadn’t gone to plan.</p><p>Zack breathed a sigh and turned to leave, arrange for a pickup team to collect the bodies and give them proper rites, but something caught his eye. A glint, and he turned back to inspect them again. He had avoided looking too closely at them before, but he turned back. Richard’s body was unremarkable - </p><p>“Wow,” Zack said to himself. A dead body was unremarkable. How things had changed.</p><p>But something about James was off. His torso lay underneath that of Richard, and he would have been protected from the explosion and cave-in. Zack moved to shift Richard’s body - “sorry Richie,” he whispered as he did - and saw what had shone to catch his gaze. An arrow sticking out of James’ back. This wasn’t an accident or a random bombardment as he’d suspected. Someone had attacked the bunker in person.</p><p>“Trini,” Zack immediately said into his wrist communicator, sending a message back to the Coinless headquarters underneath the hill. “Someone’s found us, we need to-”</p><p>But before he could finish the thought a tiny sound caught his attention and another glint caught his eye. Instinct took over and before he knew what he was doing he was dodging backwards, just in time to see an object fly past his head at dizzying speeds. He immediately drew his sidearm and fired a shot in the direction it came from, but it hit nothing. Another sound and another object flew towards him, but he ducked out of the way and it embedded itself in the hill behind him. He shot a quick glance at the object. An arrow. From what little he could tell, identical to the one that had killed James.</p><p>Zack fired another shot in the direction of the arrow and again hit nothing but the ground, but the dirt and dust kicked up from impact drew his attention to a dark figure emerging from the fog.</p><p>“You always were too clever for your own good Zack,” a deep, distorted, voice came from the figure, the voice itself too inhuman to recognise, but something about the tone, the sarcastic edge to the sentence, was too familiar for Zack’s comfort. Whoever this new foe was, they were deadly, they were accurate enough to have shot James through the tiny view port of the bunker, and they knew who Zack was.</p><p>“Who-” he started, but another arrow came towards him, drawn back and loosed so fast that Zack didn’t even register it was happening until the arrow was already fired. He dodged again, but not fast enough, and the arrow sliced into his shoulder, though it only made a surface level cut. Zack ignored the pain and the blood he felt welling up. Problems for later.</p><p>“Oh, you are gonna regret that,” he shouted back at the figure, and the figure responded by nocking another arrow. Zack, however, was prepared, and leapt out of the way, using the incline of the hill to roll down and out of the way of the next shot. Coming out of the roll, he planted his left foot on a small but sturdy rock on the surface of the hill, took quick aim, and fired off three shots before another arrow could come. The first and last shots went nowhere but the second found the assailant’s leg and knocked it out from under them, a grunt of pain confirming the hit. They quickly recovered into their own roll, and fired another arrow as soon as they were upright, but Zack deftly dodged it and ran towards them. He was clearly at a major disadvantage at this range. He needed to close the distance, fight them hand to hand. There he had the advantage. He still remembered no end of tricks from his days as a Power Ranger, however long ago they were. He could fight them off in close quarters, he felt confident of that.</p><p>As he got closer, dodging more arrows as the figure retreated, the fog receded and he got a better look. She was clad in black armour with highlights in- no, Zack thought, that can’t be right. He’d only seen that shade of pink a long time ago, and on those damned Pterodactyl Sentries he hadn’t seen in a suspiciously long time. That helmet too, it looked very similar to a memory Zack hadn’t seen in a very long time. He couldn’t see her eyes through the black visor, but he didn’t need to, he could feel their furious gaze on him. It couldn’t be, he thought, almost pleaded to himself, but he put the thought out of his mind. She was wielding a wickedly bladed bow, almost identical to that sword that the Green Ranger had used in his first couple of fights with them. The one they had destroyed, for all the good it did, Zack thought. She held a handful of arrows in her aiming hand, and plucked one out of her hand, nocked it in her bow, and missed Zack by an inch as he rushed her.</p><p>By the time he reached her, she was out of arrows, but not out of tricks. She pulled back her bowstring and an arrow-shaped laser materialised in it, but Zack knocked the bow aside before she could fire and aimed a powerful punch straight at her head. It never connected, however, as she dropped to the ground and kicked upwards, striking Zack right in the chin and knocking his head backwards with enough force that he staggered backwards, almost falling over. He pulled his head back down to his target just in time to see her leap into a backwards somersault and fire a laser arrow in midair that hit Zack straight in the knee supporting his whole body weight.</p><p>“Damn!” he yelled and sank to the ground. The arrow dissipated but the pain didn’t. He punched the earth and pushed himself up to his feet, just in time to see another laser arrow aimed point blank right between his eyes. This is it, he thought to himself, after everything I get killed by an assassin.</p><p>“Not bad, Zack,” the assassin taunted. “But you were never good enough.”</p><p>Before she could fire, though, a blast hit her right in the side of the head and sent her rolling down the hill, a short shriek of pain and anger her only reply. Zack looked to see his saviour.</p><p>“Trini!”</p><p>“Your message got cut off,” Trini stood with two pistols higher up the hill, one still smoking from the shot that had saved Zack’s life. “I knew something was up. The bunker?”</p><p>“Gone,” Zack confirmed, pointing at the cause who was now getting back on her feet. “Richie and James too.”</p><p>Trini growled in displeasure, and turned her guns back towards the figure, but her silhouette had changed. Her helmet had been damaged and she reached up to rip it off of her head, and as she did, a familiar face and spiked hair appeared in its place.</p><p>“No,” Trini whispered.</p><p>“So you decided to join the fun, huh Trini?” Kimberly taunted, her voice clear as day now that it wasn’t distorted by her helmet as she fixed them both with a stare of sheer malevolence from those unnaturally bright green eyes that used to be brown. Zack had thought a long time ago that his heart couldn’t sink any further than it had, but now he felt it fall again, further than it had before. Bad enough that Jason and Billy were dead, but he’d thought that Kimberly had gone the same way. He would have given anything to see her alive again, but not like this. This was infinitely worse than seeing her dead.</p><p>“What did Drakkon do to you?” he could hardly believe he had to ask.</p><p>“My master showed me the truth,” Kim sneered back. “And now you’ve shown me where your pathetic resistance has been hiding. I’m here to crush you.”</p><p>“Kim, please-” Trini started, though halfhearted. Zack could tell she knew what he did: if Kim was working for Drakkon, there was no getting through to her. Whatever Drakkon did to hold people under his control, whether it be blackmail, magic, or just the sheer terror of his wrath, nobody ever betrayed Drakkon once they had joined up.</p><p>“Save it,” Kim interrupted. “I’m not who you thought you knew. I’m the Ranger Slayer now, and I’m going to do what I was sent here to do!”</p><p>Trini aimed one of her guns, but Kim was faster. She was always faster. She hit Trini square in the shoulder with another one of her laser arrows, and before either of them could react she was aiming another one. Trini dodged the next arrow and fired a shot, but Kim dodged it casually, like she barely even registered it as a threat and fired back. Zack stood and aimed his own gun but Kim rounded on him, running sideways and firing a salvo of arrows faster than Zack or Trini could react. It was all they could do to avoid being hit as they tried to find a window to fire back, but the onslaught of arrows never stopped. Zack stopped running, doubled back and missed the hail of arrows, and took aim for just a second, but it was too long, and an arrow hit him directly in the chest. His armour took the brunt of the force, and he silently thanked it for saving his life for the second time that day, but it did nothing for the pain, and he couldn’t fire a shot. Kim leapt into the air, a sideways somersault, and fired more arrows, but just as she landed, the ground beneath her erupted into flame and flying dirt. Kim herself was launched into the air, and though she corrected herself in the air and landed perfectly on her feet, she looked with malice to see another figure holding a much larger gun pointed at her. Aisha stood atop the hill, reloading her cannon for another shot.</p><p>“Three at once is more than I care to face,” the Ranger Slayer growled. She turned to Zack.</p><p>“We know where you are,” she threatened. “You can’t hide from us. My master will destroy you and reign supreme. You cannot stop us.”</p><p>Aisha fired another shot, but it missed the target. When the dirt settled and the smoke cleared, Kim had vanished back into the fog.</p><p>The three former Rangers took a deep breath.</p><p>“Aisha, how did you?” Trini asked, too out of breath to finish her sentence.</p><p>“I was patrolling and heard shots,” she responded. “Looks like I got here just in time.”</p><p>“Kim…” Zack stared at the last spot he had seen one of his oldest friends, now yet another in the endless list of people trying to kill him and all he stood for. He didn’t want to believe it.</p><p>“That’s not Kim,” Trini said firmly. She had always been more realistic, more cynical than Zack had ever been. “Not anymore. She’s just another one of Drakkon’s army now.”</p><p>Zack closed his eyes and took another deep breath. “You’re right,” he said. He hadn’t dared to think Kim had still been alive, but the Coinless had lost three good soldiers today. The odds grew ever against them. Now, more than ever, he realised, they would need a miracle to save their world.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>